Darcy

Yeah, I get that message a lot. Adam’s camera is set to take GIGANTIC pictures by default and changing the setting requires an advanced degree in engineering, so any product photos I take end up being 1000000000000px by 1000000000000px. Well, something like that. Needless to say, they all need to be resized before uploading to Etsy, or I will get the lovely message shown above. I would also like to keep the original Gihugeous version in case I need to blow them up and make giant posters of them. Or use the high-res shots for portfolio prints, which is more likely.

The easiest photo resizer isn’t really a program, it’s more like a process automator. It’s called Picture Resizer 3.0 (okay, so they didn’t spend a lot of time on the name) and you don’t even need to open a program up to use it. Here are the official instructions from the website:

• Download “PhotoResize400.exe” and place it on your desktop.
• Drag and drop JPG files or folders with JPG files on the application icon.
• The tool will resize JPG images and save them next to the originals. Names of the new pictures will be based on the original names, with a suffix indicating their size. For example, the resized version of MyPhoto.jpg will be called MyPhoto-400.jpg, where the number 400 indicates the size of the picture.

So once the icon is on your desktop you select your pics, drag them over the icon and drop. It automatically resizes and places the new pic beside the old. Done.

If you want to resize to a size other than 400 px just change the name of the file. I changed the name of the icon on my desktop to PhotoResize800 and all my photos were resized to 800 px when I dragged my folder over the icon. There are a bunch of other ways you can tweak the program described on the website, but I just needed a quick and easy photo resize tool and this fits perfectly.

We’ll start with an easy project, but something you need to get started making early since you have to make so many.

For our wedding favors, we decided to make coasters for each guest to take home – 2 per guest or four per couple so that even people who came without a date would still have a matching set. We were told that if you have good wedding favors you will have none left over after the wedding and we think we did okay because there weren’t any left for us – I had to make some more for ourselves later.

The coasters we made from bathroom tiles from the hardware store. A box of 75 tiles cost about $70, giving us a final price of about $2 per guest. We bought 5 boxes and tried to carry them home ourselves since we only live across the street. Don’t do that. They are damn heavy. We almost died.

The only thing else we needed to buy was a roll of cork lining. Then came the fun task of cutting 1400 cork circles – one for each corner of 350 stone coasters. It wasn’t as hard as you’d think. I had a cork cutter from work, but a 3/4″ punch would work well – or you could cut grids and use square feet for the coasters.

Here’s where hubby-to-be comes in. You can either use the “if you loved me, you’d do this for us” or “you can either do this or sign all the thank you cards by yourself,” but whichever you choose, set him up with the tiles, some epoxy glue (the kind you mix together – or some other glue for tile surfaces) and the 1400 little circles. It’s better if you don’t let him see all the tiles at once, just keep bringing in more little piles, or else he may refuse at the beginning. One cirlce per tile corner and you’re good to go.

Then you can package them in little bundles of two. I printed little tags (using black chancery font – as I used for all the wedding stationery) and cut lengths of 1″ wide velvet burgundy ribbon. I attached them with antiqued brass eyelets and used the eyelets to string thin black ribbon to tie the coasters together and place them on each place setting. Ta-Dah!